I have a habit of injuring myself in weird ways. I called sick yesterday as I got concussion from a giant pointy bulb in a fan + light combo above my bed. I was trying to see if there was a box at the back of an in-built, very tall wardrobe and being only 5ft exactly, I decided the best idea was to jump on the bed so I could get a glimpse....I blame exhaustion for my lack of common sense and total lack of observation for the resulting concussion I received from hitting the amazing-strong bulb.

I tend to think of a "normal" way to injure yourself is being in situations where you would expect injury to occur e.g. in the kitchen, the stairs, out in the woods etc. I don't often injure myself badly, but each time it is fairly memorable. I got burnt badly while filling up a hot water bottle (inside a soft-toy bunny case), I have scars on my arm from falling through an ancient plastic chair while trying to water the plants on the top shelf of my mother's greenhouse, I broke my collar-bone as a kid right outside a hospital, the same hospital we had just left after a routine check-up! I have a tricky nerve down my neck due to a whiplash incident involving little old ladies and dodgems with questionable speeds (very very fast, too fast to be health and safety friendly).

So thinking about this in bed the other day, nursing the bump on my head, I wondered: what have been your worst injuries? Your weirdest? In the job? Outside the job?

53 Replies

This person is a verified professional.

Strangest injury for me was probably when I was 13. I was riding my bike up the road to my house, and the entire handlebar assembly just fell off and jammed in the spokes. Unfortunately, I was going fast enough for the bike to flip forward, deposit me on the ground, and land right on top of my head. Ended up with three or four staples in my scalp to close the cut I got.

This person is a verified professional.

Injury on the job: I've had on the job was tearing my rotator cuff while mounting a server in the rack. In short, the slider rules did not stay locked in and to prevent the server from crashing on the floor I caught it but felt incredible pain in my shoulder. After explaining it to the HR director she drove me to the ER where they confirmed that I tore it. Luckily it didn't need surgery.

Strange injury was from a major snowstorm that hit Chicago back in 2011. I went to my grandma's house to help her with something when the snowplow comes by to block me in...again. So I grabbed the shovel and started heaving it off the driveway. As I finished 3/4 of the end of the driveway while heaving I dislocated my left shoulder in mid-heave and relocated it in the same motion coming down. That hurt like a son of a b!@#h

Most recently - I was trying to jump over some stuff in my garage and landed on a board with some stupid long nails. The nail went completely through my foot and was pushing on the top of my slipper haha. Because it was all the way through, I figured I'd try to leave it in and go to the hospital. The problem was... it was connected to a piece of wood. There was a hand saw probably within reach but I had to pivot to reach it.... so I spun around on that foot and it immediately felt awful and I said "F THIS" and just quickly yanked my foot upwards and went into the doctor. They gave me a shot, pulled some pieces of the nail out and then shoved a stupid nozzle of fluid up the hole to clean it out - THANKS FOR THAT.

Every Thanksgiving my Dad's family does a huge get together with all of my cousins and their families, so I usually take that whole week off and road trip down to LA so I can see everyone. My family is also SUPER competitive - whenever you get us all together there's always a game being played with lots of whooping and yelling.

So back in 2017 when we were down there my cousins and I decided to play basketball, as I hadn't seen them for a few years and they all had finally grown up a bit (I'm 6'2; these kids had just hit high school and had shot up to 6'3 and 6'4). Being nearly 10 years older I took one of the little kids and we played 2 on 2 for a little bit before switching over to 21. I'd say we played for a good 3 hrs without any injuries or anything. Then, about 15 minutes before my dad and I were going to pile back in the car to begin the drive back to Oregon, one of the little kids asked me to play Pig with him. 5 minutes later I'm rolling on the ground thinking I've broken my foot (jumped to grab a rebound and landed awkwardly). Luckily it was just an ankle sprain, but still - I, a completely healthy 27 year old guy, severely sprained my ankle playing Pig with a 7 year old.

Needless to say, I spent the entire drive back in the back seat with my foot wrapped, iced, and elevated. Ended up being on crutches for a few days when we got home and then had to limp around for a few weeks. Nearly two years later I still get pain in my ankle from time to time and still have reservations about planting and jumping (I only just recently got it strengthened back up to a point where I felt comfortable doing squats at the gym again).

DiegoF1000101 You can not just dump and run on that one, I think we should get an explanation.

Eh, worth a shot anyway. Basically I just fell from up high with something around my neck, got hanged, and died. Got rushed to hospital, doctors brought me back to life and I was in a coma for a couple weeks. Was supposed to be a vegetable when I came back, but I only have some brain damage. On the bright side, I lost 40lbs in the coma! ;-)

This person is a verified professional.

The weirdest injury I can recall was when I was climbing the fence as a kid to talk to my friend that lived next door. I was barefoot and slipped off the beam I was standing on and a large chunk of wood (about the size of a quarter and about 4mm thick) went through my toe. I spent the better part of 3 hours picking splinters out of the gash it left when I took the main chunk out.

This person is a verified professional.

The only couple things I have is when I was a kid I was trying to get into the medicine cabinet I was perched up on the toilet and fell down and smacked the back of my head on the sink. If my hair gets cut short enough you can see the dent in my head.

Also when I was little I was riding on the back of a bike in one of those kids seats and fell off smacked my head and was temporarily blind.

This person is a verified professional.

Like any good parent we wanted to make sure our kids car seats were secured properly in our mini-van. We had recently visited one of those car seat checks the police often run. They said we had it mostly right but you really need to secure them super tight, almost inhumanly tight. We had something happen where we needed to remove the car seat so that I could make a run to the local hardware store for some sheets of wood. My wife didn't want me to remove the seats but capitulated. I had to show her I was sufficient to replace the seats securely in the car so I went out to our mini-van and placed the corner of the car seat against my chest and with both hands pulled as hard as I humanly could to secure the belts super tight. All was going fine until I felt an odd pop in my chest followed by an odd sensation. Days passed and the odd sensation turned into an ache/pain. Finally the wife forced me a few days later to visit the doctor. Doctor immediately checked to make sure I didn't have a deflated lung, luckily I was OK on that part but sure enough I broke a rib. So yes while installing a child safety seat I broke a rib....

This person is a verified professional.

The only injury I've really ever had was getting the back of my head cracked open while messing around at work when I was 16. It required 5 staples and I was good as new. Other than that, nothing else has really happened.

This person is a verified professional.

DiegoF1000101 You can not just dump and run on that one, I think we should get an explanation.

Eh, worth a shot anyway. Basically I just fell from up high with something around my neck, got hanged, and died. Got rushed to hospital, doctors brought me back to life and I was in a coma for a couple weeks. Was supposed to be a vegetable when I came back, but I only have some brain damage. On the bright side, I lost 40lbs in the coma! ;-)

The list is long. But at least at work, the strangest was when was running some cat5 and had to get into an area above a drop ceiling. I setup the ladder climbed up, removed the ceiling tile. Looked clear and climbed up more so my head was poking through. What I didn't know was a stiff piece of wire was hanging down, but since it was pointed right at me I didn't see it. It was apparently leftover from the previous drop-ceiling, and was cut at an angle. So, it punched straight through my scalp and the tip slid across my skull a couple inches before I could stop. I was really freaked out as first, cause all I felt was a hole and a blood on a couple inches of the wire, so at the moment I didn't really know what path it had taken. A visit to the urgent care center, a tetanus shot and anti-biotics later, and I was fine.

This person is a verified professional.

Long version. We lived in a 3 story home with the 3rd floor being our master bedroom and where my main computer was located. I was checking email when I hear a loud bang, like a shotgun going off. My UPS started beeping and the lights in the house went off. I started to run down the stairs to see what was going on, lost my balance and fell forward. Put put my left arm out to try and catch myself and manged to grab the top of the door frame at the bottom of the stairs. I immediately knew I tore my rotator cuff. The loud noise? a Squirrel completed the circuit on the power lines and caused the transformer to blow. Hurt like hell, but since I was active duty at the time it counts as 20% of my 50% VA disability.

This person is a verified professional.

Two years ago while riding my motorcycle home from work, power lines fell across the road in front of me. I broke my right collar bone, cracked my right scapula and broke all the ribs front and back on my right side. Had a major concussion and some serious road rash too.

This person is a verified professional.

My weirdest injury was the result of a car crash, in which the airbag (or the plastic covering of the airbag that flies off, not sure which) messed up my face so bad I had no feeling in part of my face for over a year. It gradually came back, with just part of my upper lip still numb. Eventually all the nerve endings healed because I'm all good now.

That was also my worst injury, with fractured cheek bones. I've never broken a bone other than that, but I did slice off part of my finger with a boxcutter and had to get it cauterized to stop the bleeding. That happened working at Wal-Mart as a stocker, trying to cut the plastic wrap off a palette of juices/beverages. Lost that job because after injuries at work they make you take a drug test... and they were right in assuming the drugs contributed to the accident.

This person is a verified professional.

12th grade high school. Someone realized I'd never been ritually thrown in one of the drainage ditches during PE. Typically reserved for 9th graders but I moved there in 10th.

So on Thursday I outran half the track team back to the gym to avoid "the plunge", but on Friday they were waiting. So, a few grabbed me, and after wrestling for 3 years I had just about as good a grip on them, so we were all sliding toward the ditch. At the last minute we all let go and I just jumped in, rather my socks and shoes get wet and muddy than everything.

I come out of the ditch and someone yells "Oh shit!", pointing to my leg. Blood is POURING down my leg. Something in the ditch, have no clue what it was (certainly a bottle or can) had gouged a 4 by 2 inch, about 3/4 inch deep, chunk out of my left calf.

I hobble to the gym, coaches wrapped it and took me to the hospital on the base there. Dancrane mentioned medical grade pipe cleaner, they used a frigging baby bottle brush on that thing, squirting it with a huge syringe of betadine.

My dad had to come from another base to sign the release so they could trim a tiny piece of skin. He was NOT happy.

That was certainly the oddest. Worst was probably the 12 stitches due to the piece of plywood getting kicked back into my shin from the tabletop tablesaw, that was on the ground, with no guard. Oh wait, I did have a 12' telephone pole fall on my head in the 3rd grade. Still have the dent, 50-some years later now.

Worst injury on the job was when I worked in a pet store. It was one of my all time favorite jobs. Anywho, I was cleaning the inside of the glass on our fish tanks while I was talking away on the phone and not really paying attention. Well I cornered a lion fish and by the time I realized my mistake he nailed me twice, leaving six puncture wounds. Almost immediately half of my arm began swelling and never in my life had I been in that much pain. I had to sit in the stockroom while I cried. Half of my hand was bruised for a week.